sacrifice
by tatooinesun
Summary: Between the bile and the sweat you feel the Captain pat you on the back and tell you that you'll get over it. You do, and you get good at it. The higher ups take notice. Nice aim, good kill, well done Jaq. You take pride in that, because you've never really been good at anything. Just a boy from Alderaan with a penchant for slicing things you shouldn't, but now you have this.


p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"They put a blaster in your hand when you're eighteen and tell you to kill with it . For a purpose they say . For the good of the republic . To answer a call the Jedi are blind to while they sit in their temples and evaluate a threat that's already at their door . Your friends and what's left of your family give you a hero's farewell and hail you off to war , and you never see them again ; the first casualty in a long list of heroic incentives , and far from the last . For the first time you feel the warped rush of space lurch your heart into your throat . Ot's different than the tropospheric flying you've done before , zipping and whirring on an airspeeder through the mountains of Juranno , and soon you get a taste for it , become as addicted as you do to the cheap cigarras you share with your new comrades-in-arms . You've always had a pension for addiction ./p  
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"Honor is the next sacrifice . There's no honor in killing , not in the way they'd depicted on the posters , drilled into your skull visions of medals and glory during training . It's brutal and far quicker to snuff out a life than you anticipated , and you throw up all over your boots the first time you do it , even if your victim is just some faceless Mandalorian who'd tried to gut you like a nerf with a vibroblade . Netween the bile and the sweat you feel the captain pat you on the back and tell you that you'll get over it . You do , and you get good at it . addicted to it . The higher ups take notice . Nice aim , good kill , well done Jaq . you allow yourself to take pride in that , because you've never really been good at anything . Just a boy from Slderaan with a penchant for slicing things you shouldn't , but now you have this . Even if this leaves you thinking about your victims on a cold military issued cot in the middle of some war ravaged city that won't have a name by the time it's over , blurring the lines between what's real and what's not because sometimes you feel something deeper than empathy when you put a smoking bolt between their eyes . Like you're at the other end of the blaster ./p  
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"You convince yourself it doesn't matter , become numb to it , take up a juvenile card game to bond with your fellow soldiers over a glass of juma , exhausted and brow beaten in between the fighting and the rocket bleached skies . They die and you live . Hate and vengeance replace mercy and justice because you're feeding off a never ending cycle of death and destruction . The Mandalorians slaughter innocents by the millions and still the Jedi do nothing . It makes them just as guilty ./p  
p style="font-family: 'Lucida Grande', 'Lucida Sans Unicode', 'GNU Unifont', Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 14px;"And then it's over . Revan the butcher is so much easier to process confined to a holo , a whispered name passed around war camps and smoldering fires . You're taller than most , don't have to crane all that significantly to make them out over the sea of soldiers , all vying for just one glimpse of the catalyst who'd instigated the end of the Mandalorian siege , who'd broken the Republic's chains and led you all to victory . A savior . Their hold on the large mass that's congregated is transfixing , and you burn with devotion , with a determination to chase this figure into the very blackest depths of the galaxy . Prior allegiances be damned . you're loyal to Revan , not the Republic , loyal to the Jedi who'd joined their cause , not the ones that hid and did nothing . You can separate friend from foe , and your only ally stands before you now , commanding your allegiance to the Sith . So you follow , and the last sacrifice you make is yourself ./p 


End file.
